Nickel's Q3 Stalemate: Supply Glut Keeps Price Stuck Around $15K

Nickel spent most of Q3 2025 treading water. After wild swings in H1 (hitting $16,720 in March, crashing to $14,150 in April), prices stabilized around $15,000-$15,500 through the summer—basically going nowhere fast.

Here’s the real problem: it’s not that nobody wants nickel. Demand is actually growing fine. The issue is Indonesia is flooding the market. Even after cutting output by 35%, nickel stockpiles on the London Metal Exchange ballooned from 164K MT in January to 232K MT by end of September. That’s a lot of metal sitting around waiting to be absorbed.

Throw in some headwinds—the US EV tax credit died on September 30, and EV makers are quietly switching to lithium-iron phosphate batteries (less nickel-heavy)—and you get a structurally oversupplied market with nowhere to go.

Indonesia’s trying to play traffic cop. New policy: mine quotas now reset annually instead of long-term. Royalties also jumped (nickel ore: 14-19% vs. the old 10%). Will it work? Metals analyst Olivier Masson at Fastmarkets isn’t optimistic. Unless Indonesia actually cuts supply growth, he sees prices staying rangebound near $15,000 through year-end. The Philippines’ rainy season (Oct-Q1 2026) might help a bit by temporarily tightening supply, but don’t expect any fireworks.

Bottom line: Nickel’s stuck in limbo until somebody actually takes supply off the table.